He underwent brain surgery but never woke up and died weeks later on December 29 from a head injury leading to multiple organ failure.

The jury heard Mr Mathers was jailed in 2012 for sexually abusing Caddick in 1986 to 1987.

Mr Giuliani added: “The effect of that abuse has, says the defendant, lived with him into and adversely affected his adult life.

“The defendant says that abuse was not the motive for the attack but an explanation for the attack.”

Caddick said he lost control because of the effects of the abuse and Mr Mathers’ reaction to being questioned about it.

He denied going to the home to attack Mr Mathers but said he was in the area and coincidentally saw him staring from a window.

He said he asked “why did you do that to me when I was a kid?” and “saw red” when Mr Mathers replied he had gone to prison for it, thinking it sounded like a justification.

Jurors were told the married dad-of-five went to another uncle’s home afterwards and said: “I’ve been up there and hit him. The lad who messed about with us.”

He went back home to Carisbrooke Avenue, Thorntree, Middlesbrough, where police were already waiting, to hand himself in.

He told officers: “I’ve batted him all over. He deserved it.

“I hope he is dead.”

Police on Fulbeck Road (Image: Peter Reimann)

Mr Giuliani added: “The Crown says this: the defendant, following a night of drinking when still under the effects of alcohol, intended to kill or at the very least seriously injure John Mathers as revenge for the abuse he suffered.

“The defendant says no, that is not correct.

“The defendant says the meeting was a coincidence and the abuse was not a motive but an explanation of why I behaved in the way I did, and that was because at the time my responsibility was diminished or I had lost control.

“While one may have sympathy for him, that sympathy cannot extend to colour the facts of this case.”

Judge Simon Bourne-Arton QC, the Recorder of Middlesbrough, said the jury were to consider whether Caddick lost self-control or whether his responsibility was diminished by an “abnormality of normal functioning” caused by a medical condition.